The open source community is “quite a sick place to be in,” said Red Hat engineer and Systemd developer Lennart Poettering. “The open source community is full of [assh*les], and I probably more than most others am one of their most favorite targets,” Poettering added. “I get hate mail for hacking on open source. People have started multiple ‘petitions’ …. asking me to stop working.

It’s a fact of life in virtually every community that there will be countless daily distractions — news announcements, controversies, squabbles — that take up the majority of our time and energy, leaving little for the big picture. The Linux community is no exception. That’s why it was such a relief to see a post recently that struck directly to the core of all that is FOSS.

There’s just never a dull moment here in the Linux blogosphere, and the last week or so has been a perfect illustration. Not only did the Shellshock bug hit the proverbial fan, but the ever-burning Systemd flames flared even brighter, thanks to the addition of some fresh fuel. The Debian team has decided to make the GNOME desktop default again — and Systemd is at least part of the reason.

Well autumn is nigh upon us here in the Northern reaches of the Linux blogosphere, and any day now the a/c will downshift to “medium” over at the Broken Windows Lounge. Oktoberfest ales are selling like hotcakes, and more than a few bloggers are rejoicing at the end of the Dog Days in fact — but for the recent arrival of a sad bit of news: Developer Jeff Hoogland is leaving Bodhi Linux.

Fires may be easy to start, but putting them out is a different matter. Case in point: the Systemd inferno. What started a few weeks ago as a relatively straightforward controversy over an oft-debated technology Visit the VMware Tech Center has now virtually blown up in Linux fans’ faces. The latest flareup? None other than the suggestion that Linux be split in two.